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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Meet MiniTunes

In my endless journey to find the best possible media player, I recently stumbled across MINITUNES, one of Flavio Tordini's creatures, a talented Italian developer who is bringing some very cool applications to both Mac and Linux.

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After launching the application for the first time, I was asked for the location of my music library. The import process started and finished (a fair amount of time later, I have to say, mostly due to the artist search in Last.fm) successfully despite the considerable size of my music collection. I mention this because several other players (Amarok, Songbird and pre-v2.x Banshee, for example) have failed or crashed on that first import in the past.

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The interface is light, uncomplicated and beautiful. Unfortunately for me, Last.fm didn't fetch all artists pictures and album covers, which resulted in several "blank" spots here and there, but the looks are impressive nonetheless. I wish it was possible to add pictures and covers manually, a great feature available in other players that I dearly miss here.

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Another great thing about MiniTunes is that it is extremely easy to use, partially thanks to a limited set of available features, but also to an intuitive interface. On top of that, probably the most valuable feature for me, the application performs well and feels quick and snappy. This is particularly evident during startup, way quicker than other heavier players, such as Amarok or Banshee.

If I could ask for more features, though, aside from the already mentioned ability to manually modify artist and album covers, I guess I would like to see a better sound menu integration. Moreover, it would be great if it was possible to close MiniTunes and keep it running in the background.

Fortunately, MiniTunes is in very early stages of development and will hopefully gain momentum as more and more people get to know it. I bet it will get better and better, even if it is a great audio player already!

I am not sure it is fair to say it needs much work. It seems to me the concept behind this player is that of a basic and simple application to start with, so I don't see it ever becoming a Banshee or an Amarok. If that's what you like, perhaps you should use those players instead?

@Bowser360: Ah, I see what you are saying, OK. I think the ability to create playlists is very much there, but I don't think they can be saved, that's the problem.

Like I said in my article, MiniTunes is a one man job, and if it gets anyone else behind it and gains momentum, it can close the gap where needed. I think its future is promising, really wish its development is not abandoned!